A brown slim creature, a woman apparently, but with arms so long that they reached below the knees, and covered all over, except for the face, with short dark hair like fur, stood at the foot of a slender palm-like tree. The hair of her head was a true hair, not like fur, but shaggy and matted. Her eyes were wild and alert like those of a suspicious doe. In the crook of one arm she carried a small light-brown absurdly downy baby. She was apprehensive, because she was at some distance from the great trees which were her home. She had ventured so far to gather plantains, the fruit that she loved best.
A slight sound behind her, and she turned her head. There was the gigantic and horrifying bulk of a monster Dinosaur half out-thrust from a thicket, its cold fish-like eyes fixing her implacably from their immense goggle rims. The three gigantic horns, two standing out from the forehead and one from the crest of the nose, pointed straight at her, the dreadful mouth, shaped like a parrot's beak, was open, and reaching for her.
She turned to flee—and there on the other side was the monster's mate. Behind was an impenetrable wall of thorn acacia. There was but one way of retreat. She went up the tree, nimbly as a monkey, and crouched shivering in a crotch. The slim top swayed under her weight. She clutched the downy baby to her heart, and sent shriek after shriek piercing through the glades.
Half a mile away the man-creature, her mate, the father of the downy baby, heard that cry of terror. He gave one deep shout in reply and then came running in silence, saving his breath.
But he was too late. The Dinosaurs were about twenty feet in length, perhaps eight feet high, and of a massiveness far surpassing the bulk of the hugest elephant that ever existed. The female began to root at the base of the tree, to overthrow it; but the male, cruder in his methods, simply straddled it, and overbore it by his sheer weight. As the swaying top touched earth the wild brown mother sprang forth, just clearing the horns. She thought herself free. Then a giant tail, swung like a flail, struck her and felled her. A second more and the great foot of the female Dinosaur crushed her and the downy babe out of existence together.
The swift end of the tragedy was seen by the man-creature as he came racing down the open glade. With a barking groan, he hurled his ragged club, blindly, at the nearest monster. By sheer luck one of its sharp splintered knots struck fairly in the monster's eye, smashing it in the horny socket. She roared with pain; and the two, side by side, came lunging toward him.
The man-creature ran back slowly, devising vengeance. It was so easy for him to outstrip these slow mountainous monsters who were spouting their fetid musky breath at his heels. He led them on toward the inland meadows where, as he had observed that morning, a newly arrived herd of giant mammalians, the Dinoceras, were now pasturing.
They were stupid, these two vast Lizard Majesties, with more brains in their pelvic arches than in their skulls. They could not detect that the puny man-creature was befooling them. Their dull hate once thoroughly aroused, they would pursue him so long as they could move the mighty columns of their legs. At last the man-creature burst out into the open; and still they followed, raging silently.
The black herds of the Dinoceras stopped feeding all at once, and raised their dreadful heads, and stared.
These early mammals were not so colossal in bulk as the Dinosaurs, but their appearance was sufficiently impressive. The bulls were nearly twelve feet in length, and suggested a cross between some unimaginably colossal wild boar and a freak rhinoceros. Their huge heads carried not only three pairs of horns, but also a pair of downward-pointing tusks, like those of the walrus, but shorter. There were countless cows in the herd, horned like the bulls, but smaller, and without the rending tusks. The cows, at this season, all had young. After one long comprehending look at the two terrific shapes bearing down upon them, the whole herd put itself in motion, the black bulls thrusting themselves to the front, the cows forming a second array with the calves huddled behind them.
The man-creature they hardly noticed, he seemed to them so insignificant. He ran on straight through the gathering line of the bulls, the nearest of whom thrust at him carelessly as he passed. When the
